House Judiciary Panel Asks FBI To Provide Answers Ahead Of Anthrax Hearing

In a letter to Mueller sent ahead of a Sept. 16 hearing on "troubling issues" about the FBI, panel chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) asked Mueller to answer several questions about the bureau's anthrax investigation. Conyers asked for the identities of White House officials who wanted the agency to link the anthrax attacks to al Qaeda or Iraq, why army scientist Bruce Ivins retained his security clearance at Fort Detrick despite being a suspect in the probe, and why another Fort Detrick scientist, Steven Hatfill, was the focus of the investigation despite evidence pointing elsewhere...

The script for the hearings seems already to have been written.

Is Eric Nadler the brother of leading committee member Manhattan Congressman Jerrold Nadler? Eric has a blockbuster documentary on the subject coming out in mid-October.

A merits-based approach, rather than one aimed at politicizing the question, would focus on obtaining a copy of the February 2001 PDB to the President that warned of AQ/EIJ’s plan to use aerosolized anthrax. See also early October 2001 Wash Po article saying that they had expected anthrax attack rather than a planes attack. See also WTC head’s testimony before the 911 Commission.

It’s real simple, Perry A., Esq., counsel to Conyers. The Committee should ask for the PDB from February 2001 that 7 years later has no reason to be classified. Save the politics for your vote behind the curtain in November. Focus on the whodunnit and the relevant evidence. Here, there is no question that the Administration acted forthrightly and quickly in shooting down the bentonite story. See Ari Fleischer book explaining his conversations with the ABC reporter. The fact that some Benador clients were pitching the theory was perfectly reasonable given what the SEMS looked like. AQ simply had no reason to turn to Iraq when a key supporter in the US walked the halls of the DARPA-funded Center for Biodefense and was the former assistant (for 2 months in 1996) to Andrew Card (former White House Chief of Staff).

The Administration wanted the headlines to read SADDAM HAD ANTHRAX rather than ANDY CARD’S FORMER ASSISTANT SUSPECT GIVEN HIGH SECURITY CLEARANCE FOR WORK FOR THE NAVY AND SUSPECTED OF HAVING ACCESSED BIOCHEMISTRY INFO TO AEROSOLIZE ANTHRAX. Certainly the latter headline was too long to get people to want to invade Iraq.

But it was truly confouding for Cheney and Card given Ali’s father worked at the Iraqi embassy as a lawyer (and some cynics might suspect Iraqi intelligence staffed such slots).

So get the PDB if you want to pry open the door to the mystery, folks. And leave your preconceptions at the door. There’s still time to rewrite the script until the show airs.

You might also ask if Mr. Card was listed as a reference on Ali Al-Timimi’s resume when he got a high security clearance to work for the Navy.

Now I realize that it was a Navy lab that fingered Ivins but we’re not even going to go there.

The two scientists that Al-Timimi came to have an office 15 feet from — the leading anthrax scientist and the former deputy USAMRIID commander — were consultants to Battelle in 1999.

The former USAMRIID commander worked at SRA in 1999, as did Al-Timimi, where he had a high security clearance for the work for the Navy.

Battelle had genetically matching anthrax from Ivins’ flask. Like Ken always says, this isn’t rocket science.

It was Ken, who has always been very forthright, who first told me the FBI suspected Al-Timimi. And how can we complain that it was negligent to allow Al-Timimi to have such access (by working there) when no one yet — when the facts were so beautifully laid out by Al-Timimi’s counsel (see below) — has faced the problem.

If the Committee members and FBI can’t connect the dots after the fact, why should Ken and Charles have been able to do so beforehand? Ali did not talk religion or politics at work and spoke in very moderate and measured terms.

US Attorney Jeff Taylor, previous personal counsel to Gonzales and never confirmed by the Senate, should resign unless he corrects course in advance of the hearing.

And for the wanton stupidity of the sorority stalking theory, he should be made to go on a panty raid wearing only the legal briefs with which he says he was going to indict Bruce Ivins.

In a filing unsealed this Spring, Dr. Ali Al-Timimi’s lawyer explained that his client “was considered an anthrax weapons suspect.” Al-Timimi was a computational biologist who had worked in the building housing the “Center for Biodefense” funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (”DARPA”). He came to have an office 15 feet from the leading anthrax scientist and the former deputy commander of USAMRIID. Dr. Al-Timimi’s counsel summarizes:
“we know Dr. Al-Timimi:

* was interviewed in 1994 by the FBI and Secret Service regarding his ties to the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing;

* was referenced in the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (”Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”) as one of seventy individuals regarding whom the FBI is conducting full field investigations on a national basis;

* was described to his brother by the FBI within days of the 9-11 attacks as an immediate suspect in the Al Qaeda conspiracy;

* was contacted by the FBI only nine days after 9-11 and asked about the attacks and its perpetrators;

* was considered an anthrax weapons suspect;
[redacted]

* was described during his trial by FBI agent John Wyman as having “extensive ties” with the “broader al-Qaeda network”;

* was described in the indictment and superseding indictment as being associated with terrorists seeking harm to the United States;

* was a participant in dozens of international overseas calls to individuals known to have been under suspicion of Al-Qaeda ties like Al-Hawali; and

* was associated with the long investigation of the Virginia Jihad Group.
***

The conversation with [Bin Laden’s sheik] Al-Hawali on September 19, 2001 was central to the indictment and raised at trial. Al-Timimi called Dr. Hawali after the dinner with Kwon on September 16, 2001 and just two hours before he met with Kwon and Hassan for the last time on September 19, 2001.

[911 imam] Anwar Al-Aulaqi goes directly to Dr. Al-Timimi’s state of mind and his role in the alleged conspiracy. The 9-11 Report indicates that Special Agent Ammerman interviewed Al-Aulaqi just before or shortly after his October 2002 visit to Dr. Al-Timimi’s home to discuss the attacks and his efforts to reach out to the U.S. government.
[IANA head] Bassem Khafagi was questioned about Dr. Al-Timimi before 9-11 in Jordan, purportedly at the behest of American intelligence. [redacted ] He was specifically asked about Dr. Al-Timimi’s connection to Bin Laden prior to Dr. Al-Timimi’s arrest. He was later interviewed by the FBI about Dr. Al-Timimi. Clearly, such early investigations go directly to the allegations of Dr. Al-Timimi’s connections to terrorists and Bin Laden — [redacted]”
The letter by Al-Timimi’s counsel attached as an exhibit is equally meaty. An example of an additional detail is that in March 2002, Dr. Al-Timimi spoke with Dr. Al-Hawali (Bin Laden’s sheik who was the subject of OBL’s “Declaration of War”) about assisting Moussaoui in his defense.
The filing and the letter exhibit each copy defense co-counsel, the daughter of the lead prosecutor in Amerithrax. That prosecutor has pled the Fifth Amendment concerning all the leaks hyping a “POI” of the other Amerithrax squad, Dr. Steve Hatfill.

In an e-mail forwarded by USAMRIID researcher Bruce Ivins to FOX News to Patricia Fellows titled “HOT News,” scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.

“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material.” “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same — his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ‘But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!’”

FOX News reports:

“The FBI has narrowed its focus to ‘about four’ suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.”

Ali Al-Timimi worked in the same building as famed Russian bioweapons scientist Ken Alibek and former USAMRIID Deputy Commander and Acting Commander Charles Bailey. Al-Timimi was a current associate and former student of Bin Laden’s spiritual advisor, dissident Saudi Sheik al-Hawali. While anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins was dwelling on the girls of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Ali Al-Timimi was preaching on the end of times and the inevitability of the clash of civlizations. He was in active contact with the sheik whose detention had been the express subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War. At GMU, Dr. Bailey would publish a lot of research with the “Ames strain” of anthrax. The anthrax used in the anthrax mailings was traced to Bruce Ivins’ lab at USAMRIID, where Ivins, according to a former colleague, had done some work for DARPA that had included drying anthrax using a lyophilizer. Ali would speak along with the blind sheik’s son at charity conferences. Te blind sheik’s son served on Al Qaeda’s WMD committee. Al-Timimi’s mentor Bilal Philips was known for recruiting members of the military to jihad. The first week after 9/11, FBI agents questioned Al-Timimi. He was a graduate student in a program jointly run by George Mason University and the American Type Culture Collection (”ATCC”). Ali, according to his lawyer, had been questioned by an FBI agent and Secret Service agent in 1994 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had a high security clearance for work for the Navy in the late 1990s. The defense webpage reported that in 1996, for two months had worked for the White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card (who had been Secretary of Transportation in 1992-1993). As time off from his university studies permitted, Ali was an active speaker with the charity Islamic Assembly of North America.

The government claims that silicon was detected and yet nowhere explains how it came to be present in the anthrax attack if not present in the anthrax found in Ivins’ flask. An unnamed FBI source reports that anthrax has a natural tendency to absorb silicon from its environment if it is present in the culture medium or water used to grow it.The government finds it notable that Ivins worked late on October 4 and October 5, even though it had just been announced that authorities had expected the attack to use anthrax rather than planes.

By all appearances, the investigators got the wrong man and the Committee hearings can be expected about scoring points rather than catching the perpetrator(s).

Edited on Tue Aug-12-08 03:03 AM by sfexpat2000
What the FBI Knows: For Bruce Ivins and for us

“I don’t think the FBI knows what the FBI knows” – Richard Clarke testifying before the 9/11 Commission

In the summer of 2001, two hijackers were renting lodgings from an FBI asset in San Diego, California. But the FBI couldn’t be bothered to know in the same way that they ran off John O’Neill when he was “on fire” about Bin Laden and they couldn’t be bothered to listen to him. The next thing you know, thousands of people are dead, John O’Neill is dead and there’s a scar in the heart of Manhattan. In 2005, the FBI is sure, knows with cold institutional certainty that Steve Hatfill is the anthrax mailer and before you can turn around, they’re paying out 5 million dollars for ruining the life of an innocent man and publicly, too, by pillorying him in the press. You’d think they’d have learned by now. You’d think they’d have a picture of Richard Jewell up in every single FBI office and a special promise to say silently every morning before sitting down to the day’s work.

You’d think by now the FBI would have long needed moment of ontological panic and ask themselves how they know what they know. In 2003, they mapped out every single minute of Steve Hatfill’s life on the days surrounding the two anthrax mailings and they were not loathe to announce that to the New York Times. But in the last few weeks, when they were accusing Bruce Ivins in the press, they didn’t seem to know that Ivins couldn’t be in Frederick, Maryland at 4:30 and in Princeton, New Jersey at 5:00 p.m. on September 17th, 2001, although they seemed to know each fact separately. It’s as if the FBI has had the membrane connecting the two lobes of its institutional brain slashed, isolating one working hemisphere from the other.

The FBI claims that new technology can trace DNA from the weapon to Dr. Ivins when the tech to map a genome was available in 1998 and while withholding the exact nature of that new technology. Do you believe in magic? They claim that Ivins was the sole custodian of that flask of anthrax but do not mention the origins of that anthrax at the Dugway Proving Ground and they also elide the fact that ten other researchers had access to that same anthrax at Fort Detrick alone. And that’s without considering all the researchers and labs that obtained samples from Dr. Ivins over the years, or the fact that Ivins helped evaluate the letter sent to Tom Daschle. The FBI is dealing with a crime scene faceted over space and time as if it was a simple plane, or a projection, a Power Point presentation they can point to unambiguously. The FBI does not know what it knows. Richard Clarke was right.

I’d like to ask them if Bruce Ivins was so careful that he could drive weaponized anthrax two hundred miles and mail it without leaving any trace at all on his person, in his car or around his residence or, if he was so careless that he mailed anthrax to Pat Leahy and Tom Daschle and didn’t know that postal machines would pound the deadly powder out into the public sphere long before the envelopes were delivered. Which is it?

The FBI has said Bruce Ivins was afraid his vaccine program would be canceled and that motivated him to mail the anthrax. How is that possible? Ivins had a new vaccine in the works. No matter what happened to the BioPort vaccine he had been hired to fix, Dr. Ivins would get work. Make no mistake about it. Even if BioPort’s product went down in flames, Dr. Ivins had another vaccine in development and his expertise would be in demand. There is always work for skilled people like Bruce Ivins. As a consumer of the BioPort vaccine himself, Bruce was as motivated as anyone to get a better vaccine in place.”

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